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Crop yields
in the worst-affected areas are down by 90% this year (Image credits: BBC)
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Ethiopia is dealing with
its worst drought in 50 years.
Save
the Children has launched an urgent call for food aid but says that is only a
temporary fix and world leaders meeting in Paris must act on climate
change.
Ethiopia's
government says a staggering 10.1 million people will face critical food
shortages in 2016 — and that more than half of those are children. Adding
to that, an estimated 400,000 children are at risk of severe acute
malnutrition — a condition that can lead to stunting and physical and
mental problems.
VOA/BBC News report continues:
John
Graham, Save the Children's Country Director in Ethiopia, says this year’s
crisis is the result of a cascade of meteorological dominoes — a severe
drought related to the El Nino weather phenomenon ruined two major expected
rainfalls this year. As a result, the next harvest is not expected to
come until June of next year.
Spoking
to VOA News from Addis Ababa, Graham said: "So we’re seeing one
thing piling on top of another and it’s really affecting the rural population
very badly.”
The
UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that around 80 percent of
Ethiopians work in the agriculture sector — and most of those are
subsistence farmers who rely on rain-fed farming. That is part of the reason
that this nation sees food crises time and time again — farmers lack the
means and the knowledge to work around weather challenges.
Save
the Children is appealing for about US$100 million in donor aid from the
international community — but he says this year is the slowest response
he’s seen to such a crisis in his 18 years in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian
government has already committed a record sum — US$192 million.
Graham
says he also wants to see bigger, more meaningful, change coming from world
leaders who are currently meeting in Paris for climate change talks.
“I’d
say that we should be spending a lot more effort on adaptation of people who
are badly affected by climate change, and helping them to transition to new
livelihoods, to be able to cope with the impact of climate change," he
said. "Because so much of the focus doesn’t seem to be on that area at
all. It’s on other things that are worthwhile, like making sure that there is a
reduction in the carbon emissions and so on. But we should also care about
those people, especially the poorest people, who are dramatically impacted
by these climate changes, and why aren’t we investing more in helping them to
adapt?”
This is one of many
questions that climate change negotiators are asking this week.
Developing countries are pushing to have funding for them to adapt to
climate change included in any binding international agreement that
comes out of the Paris summit.
Meanwhile BBC's Focus On Africa reports that
the
Ethiopian government has warned that more than 10 million people - a tenth of
the population - will need food aid by next month because of the worst
drought in decades. Half of
those affected are expected to be children. The government and the UN’s World
Food Programme are distributing supplies after the failure of both this year’s
harvests in some parts of the country.
The
Ethiopian government has increased - by two million – its estimate for the
number of those who will require food aid by as early as next month.
It has launched a huge
national effort, allocating nearly US$200m for the crisis. 
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